


Just Watch The Damn Store

by Charon_the_Sabercat



Category: Motorcity (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Motorcity's tastes are varied and esoteric, Opinions shared without shame, Teens bored at a day job
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-11 01:00:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16465682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charon_the_Sabercat/pseuds/Charon_the_Sabercat
Summary: Jacob just needs them to watch the store while he does other things. It shouldn't be that hard.(Updated at random with no real conclusion. The Burners having conversations while "working" at Jacob's grocery store.)





	Just Watch The Damn Store

**Author's Note:**

> The obligatory slow set-up chapter.

The Burners came into Jacob's grocery through the loading doors. The smell hit them like a brick to the nose. It was equal parts fire, overly sweet tomato, something alcoholic, and green. They all complained out loud, and collectively their shirts went up over their faces. This was getting ridiculous; Jacob even at his most experimental wasn't this bad. At least the old dude was decent enough to look embarrassed when his charges started retching and coughing at the stench. He popped back behind the cooking counter and slammed the lid back onto the pot. It almost immediately started boiling over as if angered by his abrupt attention. He turned the heat off instead.

“Oh lord,” Chuck announced to the world, “What did the poor asparagus do to you?”

Dutch answered, “More like what did he do to the asparagus? Whatever it was, it smells like a violation of the Ceviche Convention.”

Julie chuckled. “Cute. I woulda done 'The Genovese Convention', though.”

“I was just trying something different, is all!” Jacob tucked the little experiment into the incinerator. It smelled better burning than it did boiling. Jacob didn't meet their eyes at all. “Then I got distracted. Nothing serious.”

“You feeling okay, Jacob?” Mike sat himself on a counter. Meeting Jacob in the grocery store wasn't particularly unusual by itself, but it was more the circumstances of it. “You haven't been up in the bar for, like, two days.”

Jacob's fingers twiddled on his ladle handle. “Well...”

“Or in your garden,” Dutch added. “I've been pulling the weeds for you.”

Jacob nodded. “Yeah, that, and-”

Chuck put another on the list. “You left produce in the back of Sasquatch, and now she's covered in fruit flies.”

Jacob was starting to blush. “I've been meaning to-”

Texas flexed. “And Texas is hungry! He misses his plain Muscle Mulch!”

“Uh-” Mike tried to get the wind back in his sails. “SO, intervention time. Come on, Jacob. Tell us what's up.”

“Eh, it's nothing you youngbloods can help an old codger with,” Jacob bemoaned. “I can picture the scandalized looks on your faces now if I so much as hint at it.”

“Scandalized?” Mike blew off the notion with a little “pfft”. “Like there's anything you could say that would shock us.”

“Unless it, like,” Texas ventured a guess. “Involves gross old-people make outs or something.”

“Oh dude, ew!” Chuck laughed, though, with no real venom in the retort. “Besides, the only other person Jacob even talks to is Doctor Hudson.”

Julie giggled. “Yeah, not like Jacob's rarin' to leave the store for hot make-out sessions with Doctor Hudson.”

Jacob glared at them, and he was very, very red. Conspicuously red.

Julie picked up on it first. A little staggered by the realization, she took a shy step behind the increasingly pale Chuck. “Oh. Okay, nevermind.”

Texas threw up his hands and walked away. “WELP, I'm scandalized.”

“Texas, come back. Guys, come on,” warned Mike. “Don't assume-”

“No, Mike, they're right,” said Jacob.

“Right. Mental scarring. Good talk.” Mike took a big breath. “OKAY, but the problem remains that you... want a break from work.”

“Kids, I appreciate the thought...” Jacob sighed. “But the bar hasn't been pulling any customers, and no orders have come in for parts in weeks. If I don't get to moving some of my produce, we're gonna have to live off it a while. So I've been taking time to try out some new recipes.”

Mike smirked. “You know what I think? Think you're Burned out.”

That got a little chuckle out of Jacob. “Burned out. Heh.”

“Why don't you go spend time with Doctor Hudson anyway? Do whatever you want,” Mike offered. “We can watch the store for a couple of hours, right?”

The other Burners pulled their shirts back over their noses.

“Can we clean it?” asked Dutch.

Jacob whuffed out a breath of relief. “If you clean the damned store, I'll buy you each a whole pizza. Money troubles be damned.”

That had been yesterday. That had been about an hour and a half of dishes and another half hour of everyone cleaning the floors. Nothing was ever really spic and span in Motorcity, and Mike kind of liked that as long as he wasn't nervous about anything. It was a nice “thing to do” to let the time roll by. Texas had unearthed a pair of ride-on floor waxers that he and Chuck were doing laps around the market in. Dutch was stacking cans of whatever along one of the closer aisles. Now it was just a matter of killing time while Jacob took his break. The two hour mark meant time for quality conversations that he'd been waiting to have with Julie.

“What do you mean the spider man song isn't sexy?” said Mike. “It's the sexiest song on the album!”

“We _are_ talking about the same 'Disintegration', right?” Julie looked at Mike like he'd grown a second head. She took to one of the old registers for her “post” in a vague attempt to look like she was working if any customers came in. “With 'Pictures of You' on it?”

“I'm not talking about love songs!” Mike argued back. Mike was more casual about his sitting spot. He just had the other register, of course, but he'd given up standing at it like a real worker and instead just sat on it. “'Pictures of You' is romantic as hell, and I'm not questioning that! I'm telling you that the spider man song is sexy!”

Somewhere behind him, Dutch dropped one of the cans he'd been juggling. “Wait hold up, what's sexy? The Spiderman theme song?”

Mike was nearly offended. He kicked his legs up onto the check-out counter and fully sprawled out on the conveyor belt. “No! It's that song on 'Disintegration', the one where the spider man comes at night and crawls into the singer's bed-”

“Oh that one?” Dutch interrupted. “Dude, it's a metaphor for drug addiction.”

“Is it?” asked Julie.

“No it isn't!” said Mike. “It's about sex! You don't sing a song the way he does and have it not be about doin' it! It's all in the tone!”

“Well, if it is,” Dutch winced, “I don't think Robert Smith's enjoyin' it much.”

“Robert Smith never sounds like he's enjoying anything,” said Mike. “Not even the pictures of you.”

Over on the other side of the store, Chuck belted out, “ _I'VE BEEN LOOKING SO LONG AT THESE PICTURES OF YOU!_ ”

From the other corner, Texas whined, “Pitchyyy!”

Chuck, wherever he was, sounded affronted. “Then _you_ sing it, Mr. Pitch-Perfect!”

“Look, if you just listen to it, it's all about sex, and him, like- like he wakes up by himself and it's cold, but-”

Julie cut in. “Mike, it goes 'I realize with _fright_ the spider man's having me for dinner tonight.' You can't argue that he's looking forward to it! He's literally scared!”

“But-” Choked and a little flustered, Mike struggled for his argument. It equated to him talking with his hands up in the air, roughly waggling them around in both a pantomime of the picture in his head and just getting his hands to move. “But he purrs the line, and it's got the deep sexy bass groove and the spider guy whispers in his ear-”

Julie snuck in the proper lyric, “And his tongue in his eyes.”

Dutch snickered. “I dunno, Julie, maybe Mike thinks anonymous men climbing all over him in the night is sexy. Don't kinkshame!”

“Hey wait no!” Mike shot upright. “That's not what we're talking about! We're talking about The Cure right now!”

Texas drove by in his floor waxer so very slowly, proud atop his battered old machine. “Well, it's official. Mike's a chick.”

Julie's head snapped around to glare at Texas. Truthfully, everyone was staring at him with some degree of disbelief, but Julie was the only one really angry. “Excuse me?”

“That's the four universal constants, right?” Texas turned off the machine so he didn't have to project over it and counted off on his fingers. “Death, taxes, the Blue Shell, and chicks dig The Cure. Mike digs The Cure. Therefore, Mike is a chick.”

Dutch glared. “Julie, you're closer. Punch him for me.”

Julie arms quivered. She had to be thinking about it. After a few seconds, she sighed in defeat. “I can't. I like The Cure too.”

Texas struck one of his better pointy-finger poses. “Argo-”

Dutch corrected, “Ergo.”

“Ergo, Mike-” Texas waggled his eyebrows for extra emphasis. “-is totally a dude-chick that likes the idea of anonymous spider-dudes crawling all over him at night while The Cure plays in the background.”

Mike could feel his face burning. “Texas!”

That would have to be when a customer came in the door, took in their scandalized looks, and ran right the hell back out.

“Okay,” said Dutch. “Glad Jacob wasn't here to see that."

Chuck rolled around the corner very slowly, even for a floor waxer. “Wait, what happened? I wasn't looking.”

Dutch put his hands over his eyes, fingers downward, to mime Chuck's bangs. “Dude, are you ever looking at anything?”

Chuck grimaced. “I can see when I'm being mocked, obviously.”

“Hey, Chuck, c'mere!” said Mike. “I wanna try something.”

At the three hour mark, Jacob still wasn't back. This was probably a good thing, as he hadn't walked in on Round 2 of shopping buggy chicken.

At the three hour and ten minute mark, Jacob still wasn't back. This was probably a good thing, as he hadn't walked in on the Burners tossing two utterly wrecked shopping buggies out into the garage.

 


End file.
